UVEEC Microplastic Water Vessel Project

UVEEC 2021 Team

About the Team:

The University of Victoria Environmental Engineering Club is a Canadian student-run group that focuses on engineering innovative solutions to environmental problems around the world. For our pilot project, we are building an Unmanned Surface water Vehicle (USV) that will utilize a custom-built, state-of-the-art filtration system to filter microplastics from the ocean. We hope to be able to deploy this proof of concept in October of 2022 and have it running along the southern tip of Vancouver Island.

UVEEC's Unmanned Surface Vehicle

Our Circuit Boards

Many parts of the rover are made from custom electronics in order to keep the size and weight down as much as possible. We do prototyping with development boards and the electrical team designs the PCBs throughout the year using Altium- paying close attention to the mass and volume budget inside our USV. These electronics are all custom designed, built, and researched by our electrical team.

Central Controller Board

A central part of the USV is the central controller board. This PCB is designed to interface with the central compute module (Raspberry Pi 4) while harvesting data from a plethora of sensors. The central controller board keeps track of the each individual hull's moisture, motor temperature, motor RPM, Lidar positioning, accelerometer data, GPS data, and more. It also controls the USV's rudders and BLDC motors.

Power Distribution Board

The Power Distribution Board PCB distributes power to all of the USV's electronics. It integrates multiple protection features to protect the custom built 6S 9P LiOn battery housed on the USV. With overcurrent and reverse voltage protection, the Power Distribution Board converts and regulates the 6S battery voltage down to 12V, 5V, and 3V3 power lines for the entire USV to use. It also protects, controls, and monitors the current draw of the USV's BLDC motors. It keeps track of each power lines current draw and can manually shut off power lines that are too drawing too much power. This PCB is still currently being designed.

UVEEC's 5V Buck Regulator

UVEEC's Motor Testing Jig

Breakout Boards

Each of the Power Distribution Board's custom designed circuits will be tested by constructing Breakout Boards to easily test each circuit's functionality. Some of the Breakout Boards that have already been designed is the motor testing jig which measures a BLDC motors RPM and current draw. Another Breakout Board that has been designed is the 5V 12A Buck Regulator that will power most of the USV's electronics.